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Tea Party Choice Scrambles in Taking On Reid in Nevada

NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Sharron Angle leaned across a table in her campaign office here, defending her suddenly embattled campaign to defeat Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, under the gaze of a half-dozen advisers and an official videographer packed into the room.

“We always have known that this was going to be a close race,” Ms. Angle said in a rare interview. “Senator Reid has never just given up the fight, you know? He has always been a tough opponent.”

But after a year in which Mr. Reid has been at the top of every list of endangered Democrats — there is no one Republicans would like more to unseat — Mr. Reid sees a lifeline in Ms. Angle, a former state assemblywoman who, with the backing of the Tea Party, overcame a field of establishment Republicans to win the party’s nomination.

Since Ms. Angle won, her campaign has been rocked by a series of politically intemperate remarks and awkward efforts to retreat from hard-line positions she has embraced in the past, like phasing out Social Security. There have also been a staff shake-up and run-ins with Nevada journalists, including one in which a television reporter chased her through a parking lot trying to get her to answer a question.

Republicans in this state are concerned that what had once seemed a relatively easy victory is suddenly in doubt, with signs that Ms. Angle’s campaign is scrambling to regroup.

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Sharron Angle at her campaign office in North Las Vegas.Credit
Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

“Reid had no chance to win before,” said Danny Tarkanian, one of the Republicans who lost to Ms. Angle. “He has a shot to win now. He could still lose, but I have to say he is favored.”

Ms. Angle’s primary victory was a testimony to the power of the Tea Party. And if she wins in November, it will have huge national implications: a Tea Party candidate will have taken down the most powerful member of the Senate and a close ally and friend of President Obama.

But some of her conservative positions could prove a hurdle come November. She has, for example, called for the elimination of the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, denounced the BP compensation fund for victims of the oil spill as a slush fund, and suggested that her candidacy was a mission for God.

“Our focus groups that we’ve done, my staff tells me this — her statements, they can’t believe that anyone would say that,” Mr. Reid said. “That’s why most of our TV just has her talking.”

For Ms. Angle, this has been the political equivalent of a bungee jump. In Mr. Reid, she has an opponent who has a reputation as something of a knife-fighter and who appears to have access to unlimited money and a campaign staff that includes the consultant who made advertisements for President Obama.

In recent days, there have been a number of events that suggest Ms. Angle is trying to change the way she is doing things. The interview itself was a break from past practice, and after that, she took a few questions from reporters at a brief news conference. Her appearance was filled with sharp attacks on Mr. Reid, including an assertion that it was Mr. Reid who was a threat to Social Security (though she offered that line only upon being prompted by an aide after she said she was done with her remarks).

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Supporters of Ms. Angle at her campaign office in North Las Vegas.Credit
Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

Her recent advertisements have been sharper and more focused, including one accusing Mr. Reid of wanting to raid the Social Security Trust Fund. Jon Ralston, a political columnist for The Las Vegas Sun, wrote that the advertisement was “quite well done. It’s also totally disingenuous.”

In the interview — which came as she has been criticized by Republicans for avoiding the Nevada press, and as Washington Republicans have nudged her to retool her campaign — Ms. Angle said she was in step with most Nevada voters and dismissed Mr. Reid’s contention that she was too conservative.

“I’m sure that they probably said that about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin,” she said. “And truly, when you look at the Constitution and our founding fathers and their writings, the things that made this country great, you might draw those conclusions: That they were conservative. They were fiscally conservative and socially conservative.”

In the course of the interview, Ms. Angle spoke slowly and cautiously. She appeared reluctant to engage, frequently reciting stock answers to questions.

Still, even as she criticized Mr. Reid, she also criticized Republicans, including former President George W. Bush, for excessive spending. “There is a lot of responsibility to be spread around — plenty,” she said. “Harry Reid has been around for 27 years, through several administrations. He was there for the stimulus before Obama and voted for it.”

Ms. Angle did not elaborate on what kind of stimulus she was referring to, though Tea Party leaders have been critical of Mr. Bush for allowing the deficit to balloon under his watch, the result of both the unfunded Medicare drug benefit and a series of deep tax cuts. An aide to Ms. Angle, Jarrod Agen, later explained that in talking about “the stimulus before Obama,” Ms. Angle was referring to the bank bailout plan that Congress passed under Mr. Bush.

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A poll last week found Ms. Angle in a statistical dead heat with Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader.Credit
Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

If Mr. Reid is doing better than he once was, it is still relative; he is a politician in deep trouble. A Mason-Dixon poll last week found that 51 percent of Nevadans held an unfavorable opinion of him, a toxic number for an incumbent. That poll found Mr. Reid and Ms. Angle in an effective tie.

“I’ll say this about Angle: I still think when we get to the end, it’s still going to be about Harry Reid and whether Nevada voters want to get rid of him and send a message to Washington,” said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon. “They may still hold their nose and vote for Sharron Angle even if they don’t agree with a lot of things that she says and does.”

Mr. Reid’s advisers made clear that the only way they could win was to make Ms. Angle so distasteful to Nevada voters that they would vote for Mr. Reid or someone else — it is possible here to vote for “none of the above” — or stay home

“I’m not discounting her,” Mr. Reid said. “In the spite of the work we’ve done, people need to understand more about her. There are some unusual stands she has.”

Republican leaders in Washington and Nevada said their best hopes now were that Ms. Angle would not make any mistakes and that Mr. Reid would simply sink under the weight of his unpopularity, his association with widely scorned Washington positions and his tendency to stumble.

Yet Republicans have found that Ms. Angle is not particularly open to suggestions from outsiders. Asked if her campaign had done anything wrong, she responded, “I don’t think so.”

And asked if she would be doing anything differently going forward, Ms. Angle paused again and said, “I can’t think of anything like that.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 18, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Tea Party Choice Scrambles in Taking On Reid. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe